Well shiver me timbers, mate, this be a stinkin’ Battleship clone! I’d say “put the emphasis on stinkin’”, but that wouldn’t be very polite, now would it? Actually, the truth is that Pirate Ship Battles is not a bad game.

Pirate Ship Battles ($2.99; FREE)

In fact, the more I play it, the more I’m impressed with it. It’s a shame that at its heart the combat is all Battleship, because I’m not that fond of the concept as a whole, but the game is well implemented and the campaign mode is actually pretty neat. I’m just not sure there’s a whole lot of replay value to the game.

Presentation

The graphics are decent but nothing special. They definitely have a “mobile device” feel about them, which thankfully a lot of Digital Chocolate games have managed to avoid. There’s nothing in particular that I can pinpoint and say “that actually looks pretty cool”.

The sound effects aren’t that great either. What’s really kind of interesting is that cannonballs hitting the water sound exactly the same as cannonballs hitting land. At least they sound different when they hit a boat, though. The only music that plays is this annoying riff during the menus and overhead map sequences that sounds like it’s at most 5 different cords repeated indefinitely. Overall I’m disappointed, because I didn’t feel this was up to DC standards aesthetically.

Controls

A lot of the game is menu driven, and that all seems to work pretty well. When you’re viewing a particular fleet you can replace any sunken ships simply by tapping on them, provided you have the necessary funds. To move around the main map you drag a path for the fleet you want to move, and when you’re done the fleet will move to the location where your finger was last at. However, if the path you’ve traced is too long the fleet won’t move at all, so keep that in mind if you know you have moves left but the ships don’t seem to be doing anything.

To place ships on the grid during pre-combat setup, you have to select them from your fleet by pressing on them for a couple of seconds, then drag them over to the grid. This couple second delay is important, because until I realized that’s what I needed to do, it was very frustrating trying to select a ship for placement. Once you’ve placed a ship on the grid you can tap it to rotate the ship or drag it to move the ship to a different location. You can even drag somewhere that doesn’t contain a ship to move the grid around for a better view. When firing on your enemy you tap once to pick a square to fire on, and then you tap again to actually fire. If you’re using a special attack that you have some guidance over, a button will appear in the lower right corner that you can tap to rotate your line of fire.

Game Play

Pirate Ship Battles has three game play modes. Hot Seat allows you to play against another human player using the same device. I didn’t try that mode, but I’d imagine it’s much the same as Quick Game, except that Quick Game is played against the computer. Basically you choose the size of the battle you wish to engage in, and then you duke it out until one player wins. Personally, the battles in and of themselves aren’t that interesting (at least not with the basic grid), so neither of these modes are that appealing. Of course, at least with Hot Seat mode you’ll have someone to taunt and joke around with. Your iDevice isn’t so good in regards to idle banter.

Campaign mode, on the other hand, is actually rather interesting. You start out with one fleet and your father-in-law’s dying wish: hunt down and destroy the ghost of the dreaded pirate Blackbeard. I know, there’s actually a story to be found here. What’s next, a major motion picture (look it up if you don’t believe me)? At any rate, as you progress through campaign mode and win battles you’ll start recruiting the help of other pirates, and eventually you’ll have several fleets to command. What’s more, you can also capture cities to earn extra money towards buying replacement ships. Yes, it’s sad but true. This clone, just like any other, suffers from that age old Mattel philosophy, “you sank my battleship!” Of course, in this case it would be pirate ship…

Each round you can move any fleet you own based on the number of squares allowed for that fleet. To engage an enemy fleet, a town you don’t own, or a special area – as denoted by a blue star – simply make that square the last move your fleet makes. There are a couple of things on the map you need to be cautious of. Storms travel the map, and if they happen to run into your fleet they can destroy ships. Also, there are some areas that are overly rocky, and only fleets with ships that are three squares or less in length can traverse these rocks.

Once you engage an enemy fleet, a hostile town, or most special areas you’ll have to fight. If you’re not familiar with Battleship, the basic premise is that you must sink all of the opponent’s ships (or in the case of a town, all of the forts). You will place each ship in your fleet somewhere on a grid that you are given. Ships can be placed horizontally or vertically, but not diagonally. Once you’ve placed all of your ships combat starts. You go first and then the computer takes its turn, and the number of shots you get per turn depends on the number of ships you have. The most is three shots and the least is one. You click on a grid once to select it and a second time to fire a shot.

You have a special weapons meter that fills after every shots, and after five shots it’s completely full. To select a special weapon you click on the meter and then choose one of the available options on the weapons menu. Special weapons are dependent on the size ships you still have in your fleet, and are usually good for hitting multiple squares at one time. Used wisely the special weapons can be a big benefit and help cut down on time spent in battle. If you win the battle and you’re fighting a town you’ll get control of that town. When fighting a fleet, so far I’ve always gained control of that fleet, which can then be used starting the following round of the game. I’m not sure what happens if you lose all your fleets, because that hasn’t happened yet.

Suggestions

My biggest suggestion would be to have an “end turn” button. Right now if you only want to move one fleet, you still have to view all the other fleets and select the “skip fleet” button. That’s not very user friendly. Also, it would be nice on the non-campaign modes if you could play on something besides the standard grid layout. Within campaign mode there are some pretty cool boards that have islands and things that restrict where you can place ships, and it would be fun to be able to play those boards in single game modes.

Conclusion

I really didn’t know anything about Pirate Ship Battles when I was asked to review it, and I was actually a bit disappointed when I realized it was a Battleship clone. However, after spending some time in campaign mode, I’m actually enjoying the game as a whole. I’m still not real keen on the fact that combat has to be played out like a game of battleship, but between restricted ship placement and special weapons the developers have managed to make the combat a bit more interesting. I also like the fact that you can have multiple fleets and even cities. My only fear is that once the campaign runs out, the Quick Game mode just isn’t going to do it for me, so there won’t be a whole lot of incentive to play any more. Right now I’m pretty content with my campaign, however, so I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.